[Salon] Biden Is Out of Touch With Reality

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-07-19/ty-article/.premium/biden-is-out-of-touch-with-reality/00000182-17de-d3bd-a7ea-5fff13a00000

Biden Is Out of Touch With Reality

Odeh Bisharat July 20, 2022

In spite of U.S. President Joe Biden’s endless statements to the effect that the destination of his trip was Israel, and after endlessly declaiming what he was supposed to declare during his visit, it seems that something went wrong: His lively mind decided that he was on Ukrainian soil. When he set foot on the tarmac of Ben Gurion International Airport, he turned into a bundle of empathy for the country fighting against occupation. What an embarrassing mistake.

But even after he finally realized that he was in the Middle East and not in Ukraine, he remained obsessed with the subject of the occupation. He expressed surprise to his team as to why Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid, doesn’t walk around in an army uniform like Ukrainian President Vladimyr Zelenskyy, who is fighting the Russians. Why he isn’t breathing a fighting spirit into the heroic Jewish people. Where is the spirit of the Maccabees?

Biden’s unfortunate entourage explained to him once again that the situation here is different and reminded him that Lapid only served as a journalist in the army. The alert Biden corrected them and said that Lapid served in Bamahane, and his aides were forced once again to explain that Bamahane is the name of a magazine, not an army base.

Throughout the visit Israel seemed to Biden like a country groaning under Palestinian occupation, fighting heroically for its freedom. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he swore to protect its security. If America is there, Israel can sleep peacefully, he swore. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the commander of the Beitar pre-state underground, who fought the Palestinians and before them the British, even before he was born, received the respect of the alert president. “I love you,” he said to him, and in doing so erased a painful history of murky relations between the modern Bar Kochba and the U.S. Democratic Party.

The truth is that it’s not Biden who is senile, all of America is senile – politically senile (in the sense of being out of touch with reality), including its scientists, philosophers, politicians, journalists, AIPAC and human rights organizations. In effect, all of America is a source of absurdity. It still treats Israel like an infant that needs additional billions in order to entrench its security and for more ceremonies where they swear “never again” while its army coarsely tramples an entire people. “Never again,” and the abomination is flooding the hills and the wadis.

Never again, and American weapons are filling the arsenals – not in order to release Jews from oppression, but in order to tighten Israel’s siege and occupation of the Palestinian people. America comes to Israel with billions of dollars each year, and for the Palestinians, who are besieged and living under occupation – $200 million for Palestinian hospitals, half of which is Arab money from the Emirates. Billions for the occupier, 100 pennies for the occupied. Never again. And beautiful Israel and the grandchildren of its Maccabees are entering everywhere in nearby and distant countries, entirely composed of weapons sold to the highest bidder, no matter how many victims they will claim.

And on the same subject, Yaya (Yair) Fink writes on Twitter, “The next time that the president of the United States lands here he can meet [Bezalel] Smotrich as justice minister, [Itamar] Ben-Gvir as public security minister and Avi Maoz as religious affairs minister. Is anyone else thinking of not going out to vote?”

And I, in light of this horrible post, thought, what if this horrifying scenario comes true? In the midst of my despondency I had a revelation: Perhaps this horrifying scenario is the key to Palestinian salvation. The entire world is embracing the beautiful Israeli prison wardens, who are imprisoning millions of Palestinians. Maybe if we replace the nice wardens with ugly ones, the stream of empathy will end and they will begin to understand that they would do well to wash their hands of this abomination.

Every pot has its cover, say the Arabs, and nothing is more suitable for the pot of occupation than ugly covers such as Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Not the beautiful ones like Yair Lapid. Maybe in that way we’ll remove the spell from our Joe Biden, he’ll recuperate and stop sending the billions, and also stop supporting the occupation machine.